Microsoft Continues Mobile Push With Sunrise Acquisition

Microsoft has again turned outside the company to bolster its mobile app offerings.

The company has acquired Sunrise Atelier, maker of the popular Sunrise calendar app for iOS, Android and Mac. The companies, which confirmed the deal in a blog post, did not disclose the sale price.

The deal comes a little more than two months after Microsoft paid $200 million to acquire Acompli, which made an Android and iOS email app with an avid following. Microsoft quickly rereleased the Acompli app at the end of January, renaming it Outlook, after its longstanding email app for PCs.

The deal making is part of a growing effort at Microsoft to bring more software, including its Office suite of applications, to the two dominant mobile operating systems, Apple’s iOS and Google’s Android. Microsoft had resisted such a push for years as it attempted to establish its own mobile operating system, based on Windows, in the market.

Microsoft’s Outlook mobile application already includes a calendar in it. The addition of Sunrise will likely help Microsoft enhance those features over time. Microsoft said it would continue to offer Sunrise as a stand-alone free app and that it would share more details in the coming months about how the app will be used to improve other Microsoft products.

In a blog post, Rajesh Jha, a Microsoft vice president, said “the creative talent and fresh thinking at Sunrise and Acompli will make a lasting impact on the Microsoft family as we seek to reinvent productivity.”